Chocolate covered broccoli and the Torah

Yesterday we started looking at our parshah for this week, Mishpatim, which literally means "And these are the laws..." Prior to this parshah, we've been fascinated by story after story, culminating in the Sinai event and the giving of the Ten Biggies, as I call them.

Then we get to Mishpatim. The simple fact that this section opens with the word "and" is important, for it tells us that not only are the Ten Biggies important, the use of the connecting word "and" reminds us that the Ten Biggies aren't the whole story. They are certainly a Big Idea and form the foundation for a civil society, but the Israelites are being required to consider even more laws, in order to begin to shift society into thinking about the concepts of kindness, empathy, compassion, and humanity.

In Mishpatim, though, we read three entire chapters with verse after verse detailing this law and that law, seemingly somewhat chaotic, or at least out of order or unrelated, in their presentation. We have berserk bovines, accidental injuries, lawsuits, and capital punishment, just to name a few. They seem so black and white, so strict, so boring.

It's as if the Torah has hooked us into some fascinating stories and then suddenly, story time is over and it's time to get serious. In computer games which stop in the middle of the fun and insert a math question the kid has to solve before proceeding in the game, this is referred to as "chocolate covered broccoli." Some game designers believe that luring the kid in with the game will entice them to answer the math or other question in order to keep playing. But, more advanced game designers know that chocolate covered broccoli is still broccoli, and that most kids will quickly lose interest in being forced to eat the broccoli just to play a fun game.

Is that what is happening in our Torah? We've had our fun story time, and now, if we want to hear more, we have to stop and eat the broccoli?

I think if we take a deeper look we will find something else.

Certainly, we see that there are several levels of understanding. There is the level of strict, literal, word-for-word, absolute, black and white understanding. There are no nuances, there is no context. If it says X it means X and only X at all times and under all circumstances. Some brains works like that, and as I pointed out yesterday, there are times when this is definitely the right way to understand something, such as driving rules.

What about an emergency, like when a woman is in labor and needs to get to the hospital ASAP? Or a child has fallen and banged his head or broken her leg? Sure, we always allow for emergency vehicles and first responders to break the road laws, but what about mom or dad driving the kid to the emergency room? Is there ever a time when a regular citizen is at the wheel and needs to break some of the rules of the road?

Of course there is!

And this is where nuances and learning to discern between a literal, absolute, black-and-white rendering of the words and bringing in context and a broader understanding of the underlying foundation for the rules and the words.

Another example can be found in our U.S. Declaration of Independence. "All men are created equal." Yet, this was written when slavery was accepted, and women were subjugated. So did the literal meaning of "all men" apply? Did it truly mean ALL men, even male slaves? And did it mean ONLY men?

This is exactly what Mishpatim begins to open for us! Discerning the nuanced foundational values of the rules.

And therein lies the crux of all of it.... values.

Our society, especially this time of year, spends a lot of money and talk on being goal-oriented. Setting goals, prioritizing goals, ticking things off our lengthy to do lists, defining ourselves by how well we've accomplished our goals.... and not just adults, but kids are being pushed to perform, to do, to achieve, to do better, to beat their previous personal best, to have a complete resume by the time they are mid-way through high school to guarantee their college placement.... on and on it goes.

I'm not saying any of that is wrong. What I am proposing is that we look underneath all of the goals and pushing and performing and accomplishing to find our values. What values are driving our goals? Is it purely the literal accomplishing of goals for the sake of accomplishing goals, or is there something more?

In any case, our Torah, rather than playing a game of chocolate covered broccoli with us, is teaching us very subtly to go deeper than the literal and into the nuances and values. Each law which is presented to us is begging us to look beneath it for the underlying values.

Mishpatim, rather than being anticlimactic and nothing more than a swirling vortex of laws and rules and strict guidelines for damage restitution and fines and punishments, opens the door wide for us to bring our fullest selves to the words. We bring with us context, both context from that time as well as the context of this day. We look for nuances. And most especially, we look for underlying values.

Today, more than ever, it is time to break out of the box of black and white and absolute literalism and to look deeper for the contextual nuances. Our Torah made that possible all the way back then. We do a disservice by hanging on to a literal rendering without reading deeper into the message.

Mishpatim not only gives us the right to discern meaning of Torah laws in the context of our day, but also the RESPONSIBILITY to do so.